[HN Gopher] RoboCat - A Self-Improving Robotic Agent
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RoboCat - A Self-Improving Robotic Agent
Author : l1n
Score : 105 points
Date : 2023-06-20 16:07 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.deepmind.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.deepmind.com)
| rhogar wrote:
| Performance on so few examples is impressive, paired with
| generalizability across broader tasks, and multiple embodiments +
| environments (and from just visual goals rather than complex
| verbal instructions) is quite a jump from where we saw Gato at
| last spring. If representative, seems a strong step toward
| meaningful autonomous skill acquisition/transference in realistic
| settings.
| aliljet wrote:
| I really really really want to play with robotics at home, but
| I've discovered it's super expensive to get things like robotic
| arms at home. Are there robotics platforms that are DIY ready? I
| really just want to teach a robotic arm to make my coffee in the
| morning. And I'll apply my life's effort to achieving this only
| if the cost of the robotics platform is stupid low.
|
| Yes. I know that's absurd. :)
| jjk166 wrote:
| Elephant robotics has arms starting around ~$500. I've had good
| success with their myCobot280-pi. The reach and payload are a
| bit limited but it's fine for playing around.
| tomp wrote:
| It's just normally expensive, not really really expensive. You
| can get a robot arm for as cheap as 4k (comparable to 2
| MacBooks or 1 GPU)
| juliangoldsmith wrote:
| "...as cheap as..." doesn't really fit with an item that
| costs almost the 2020 median salary in the US.
| tomp wrote:
| What about median _programmer_ salary?
| flangola7 wrote:
| Who said anything about programmers?
| tomp wrote:
| How are you gonna use a robot hand if you don't know how
| to program?
| nomel wrote:
| The cheapest is to strap things onto a 3 axis 3d printer. They
| can be had for < $200, which is much less than you could ever
| build one for.
|
| Beyond that, it's DIY, with a set of strong servos and a few
| budget microcontrollers/motor controllers, from Alibaba,
| and...a 3d printer to manufacture the rest, for something like
| an arm.
| JimtheCoder wrote:
| Was I the only one expecting a robotic cat? I am a little
| disappointed...
| ivankirigin wrote:
| "We demonstrate shredded furniture RoboCat had never previously
| seen"
| itissid wrote:
| What more would it take for google to succeed at something like:
|
| "robot can plant, water and harvest food that only poor laborers
| from other countries did, replacing whole job categories in agro
| business along with other things like making blue collar
| immigration moot"?
| tomp wrote:
| Robots becoming 100x cheaper, or humans becoming 100x more
| expensive.
| red75prime wrote:
| > Robots becoming 100x cheaper
|
| That is DeepMind succeeding on building robots that can build
| robots.
| loandbehold wrote:
| Unitree sells robot similar to Boston Dynamics Spot for
| $2700. If you add robotic gripper to it can do things like
| picking strawberries cheaper than minimum wage worker. Say if
| robot costs $3500 and minimum wage is $10/hour then robot
| needs to only complete 43 8-hour shifts over it's lifetime to
| displace human worker.
| breakds wrote:
| That is the basic version. The EDU version which opens more
| API/interface to the user cost much more. Also training a
| whole-body (quadruped + robotic arm with gripper) to do
| something like picking strawberries remains challenging
| today.
| loandbehold wrote:
| It's challenging but looks like Boston dynamics is able
| to do that kind of tasks. For instance they have a build
| in feature for spot with robotic hand that can open a
| door by turning door handle. And apparently it works with
| most doors.
| startupsfail wrote:
| * After observing 1000 human-controlled demonstrations, collected
| in just hours, RoboCat could direct this new arm dexterously
| enough to pick up gears successfully 86% of the time. *
|
| Interesting, but this doesn't sound like something that can be
| useful. For practical industry applications, you need high
| success rates. Assume you are running operations where
| dropping/flips/damages to the items that a robot handles are
| costly and not acceptable.
|
| Its only for a hobbyist pick-and-place, dropping a Lego block or
| wasting some components is not a big deal.
| jjk166 wrote:
| > Assume you are running operations where
| dropping/flips/damages to the items that a robot handles are
| costly and not acceptable.
|
| Such operations are rare and in those cases you're probably not
| picking them out of a bin to start with. For most items
| dropping or flipping the object a few times is perfectly
| acceptable, indeed that's probably how they got into their
| current position to start with.
| wilg wrote:
| This is research! The point is this is possible now, and can be
| improved upon.
| traverseda wrote:
| > Assume you are running operations where
| dropping/flips/damages to the items that a robot handles are
| costly and not acceptable.
|
| Alright, let's assume we're not too though, just for
| completeness sake.
|
| Plenty of industrial applications where an 86% success rate is
| fine, especially if you can try more than once.
| nomel wrote:
| Do you have any obvious examples in mind?
| digdugdirk wrote:
| Plenty of manufacturing environments that involve heavy
| items. Even with a lift assist, they'll still need 2-3
| people to help lift or guide something to the next cell or
| next place in the line. Lift assists are still expensive,
| and if that could be replaced with a robotic arm and cut
| out 2-3 employees at the same time? There's going to be a
| big market for this. Certainly big enough to keep a company
| afloat while they continue to refine the product and reduce
| costs.
| nomel wrote:
| I would assume bridge cranes handles the majority of the
| cases to replace human effort. It seems that
| "successfully 86% of the time" and "heavy items" usually
| means "destruction". Some secondary system to verify grip
| would be required.
| jjk166 wrote:
| Fasteners (screws, rivets, etc)
|
| Metal and plastic Stock
|
| Castings and billets
|
| Clothing
|
| Bulk sacks of material
|
| Lumber
|
| Items to be recycled
|
| Most consumer goods after packaging
|
| Hand tools (wrenches, pliers, etc)
|
| Most food items
| RajT88 wrote:
| Next up: Teach it to be a fruit ninja.
| robocat wrote:
| I too am a self-improving agent - but I wouldn't call myself a
| robot.
| kendalf89 wrote:
| Your user name says otherwise.
| neilv wrote:
| How much is a real cat is wired _a priori_ vs. learned?
|
| And is some of the learning from observing other cats?
| itissid wrote:
| I had a more general noobish version of it in my head how all
| this plays out.
|
| Now that AI based task planning can learn from so few examples
| and can do extremely general tasks like say the instruction:
|
| "Summarize my gmail twice a day at 7:00 AM and 5:00 PM filtering
| spam and stuff I don't read" would spawn an agent with a plan to
| do exactly what you want. And if it could not you could show it
| once like "recording" a super smart "macro" only this time with
| AI agents instead of Selenium.
|
| This would be an "inversion" of API way to do things. Pretty soon
| people are writing tons of these "bots" and multiple cases land
| in the some(supreme?) court over what is a bot and what is
| personal property.
| itissid wrote:
| I mean I am not blind, there are plenty of no code platforms
| that work on B2B space. But nothing in the B2C for general
| purpose domain that do this in a privacy safe manner, at least
| not one that will shake up the tech companies.
| imachine1980_ wrote:
| this will probably be b2b where you are the product, like
| social media
| bheadmaster wrote:
| Wow, I'm really excited about new autonomous mechanical beasts!
| What could possibly go wrong?
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